@great-big-stees saidYes, It is always hard no matter how prepared we think we might be.
It was 5 years ago and my mum passed 5 years before his passing. I was “prepared” for both. I still cried. They had lived long, rewarding lives.👍
-VR
@fmf saidI’m sorry for your loss FMF. He lived a contented long life I hope.
My last surviving parent ~ of the two I'd had since 1964 ~ has passed away two months short of his 100th birthday. I have children old enough to give me grandchildren [although, they haven't obliged yet] and here I am, finally, an orphan. How early/late in life did it happen to you?
I was 51 when I became an orphan.
@torunn saidQuite. That's awful, that's the wrong way around and it must feel so unnatural. I think we should have a word for when your children have died, like orphaned but not just for when you would have been a parent raising the child (orphaned is only for while you would have been a child, would have been raised by your parents), but indefinitely.
As long as we don't survive our children...
@fmf saidAre you a child? Then you're not an orphan.
My last surviving parent ~ of the two I'd had since 1964 ~ has passed away two months short of his 100th birthday. I have children old enough to give me grandchildren [although, they haven't obliged yet] and here I am, finally, an orphan. How early/late in life did it happen to you?
The definition of orphan is "a child deprived by death of one or usually both parents".
"She never mentions the word "addiction"
In certain company
And, yes, she'll tell you she's an orphan
After you meet her family, yeah, alright"
the black crowes
orphan is a situation descriptor
i don't think applying a hard and fast definition of a familial relationship helps
it's the sense of loss
i'm not describing this completely or accurately dammit